


shake the apples from my family tree

by motheyes



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Bad Brother Wilbur Soot, Bad Parent Wilbur Soot, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Ghostbur and Wilbur Soot are Different People, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memory Loss, Phil Watson is Wilbur Soot's Parent, Sad Wilbur Soot, Selective Memory Loss, Villain Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot is Floris | Fundy's Parent, alivebur my beloved, ghostbur is trying to atone for alivebur's sins, hes so smelly but i love him, that scene where ghostbur yells at phil is fuckign peak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:21:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29971785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motheyes/pseuds/motheyes
Summary: “Wilbur?” Phil asks. Dead-Wilbur turns to look at him - his hand’s raised like he wants to put it on dead-Wilbur’s shoulder but can’t quite work up the courage to.“Ghostbur,” he corrects. It feels better as soon as he says it. “I’m not Wilbur.”Or: A look at Alivebur, through Ghostbur's eyes.
Relationships: Floris | Fundy & Wilbur Soot, Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 16
Kudos: 62





	shake the apples from my family tree

**Author's Note:**

> usual disclaimer: this is about the characters from the roleplay on the smp, not about the actual people!! if i learn this violates boundaries it's getting yeeted.
> 
> title is from self- by will wood.
> 
> this, like all of my fics, is borne from spite LMAO. i think wilbur and ghostbur are so fucking neat and i haven't seen many representations of them in fanon that i like so. here. my thoughts are yall's problems now.
> 
> hope you enjoy :)

Wilbur wakes up for the first time on a beautiful morning. The sun casts soft light over the earth, welcoming it into the new day. The wind rustles through the grass and tree branches alike; Wilbur’s hair, washed out and grey, doesn’t move an inch.

There is a crater.

It cuts deep into the earth, jagged stone exposed to the air. It’s a scar in the middle of civilization, a hole between a tall tower and a row of houses. Wilbur is born staring into its depths, and something about it tugs at his brain in a way that feels _wrong_. He squints down at it, for a second, and that wrongness pushes at him even more, like there’s a matching hole in his skull and his brain is bare.

He looks away. Best not to dwell on it.

Wilbur’s first steps are stumbling, like a newborn faun’s, but muscle memory soon takes over. He was not here one second and he is here now, and his head is full of things like his name and how to walk.

There is a toppled van, just a few blocks from the edge of the crater. Wilbur doesn’t know why, but that’s where he goes first. His feet float over the shattered glass from the windows - the van used to have windows, when it was upright, and Wilbur knows this because he was the one who built it. Right. That’s why he’s here.

It takes him a couple tries, but eventually, with a lot of effort, he manages to get it upright. It’s still in a state, with a big gash running through the wall facing the crater that Wilbur is not thinking about, but it can be fixed. Wilbur just needs some sand for glass, and maybe stone.

He’s humming, thinking about all the materials he’ll need, when he hears a crash from behind him. He whips around and his eyes land on a green figure, whose axe is laying on the remnants of the Prime Path.

Wilbur and Phil meet eyes.

“Wil?”

That’s all it takes for Wilbur to be thrown into his own newly-formed memories. He sees a childhood-adolescence, filled with soft wings and whispered promises of safety. He sees _you’re my son, no - do it Phil, Killza Killza Killza - a sword in his chest through his heart bleeding out on the floor._

When Wilbur comes back to himself, fifteen minutes old and already baptized in his own blood, Phil’s closer, his hands outstretched like he’s approaching a cornered animal.

“Wil,” he says again, and his voice is trembling in the same way that Wilbur’s entire being is trembling. “Is that you?”

And - how is Wilbur supposed to answer that? How, when the answer is “yes” and “no” all at once, when there’s a debris-shaped lump in the back of his throat?

All he knows is that Phil is in front of him, and Phil is supposed to protect him, and Phil is sad. Wilbur decides then and there, rather petulantly, that he does not like sadness.

It’s as soon as he’s had that thought that he disappears back into oblivion.

* * *

Wilbur wakes up for the second time when it’s pitch black outside.

He’s not by the Camarvan anymore. No, now he’s underneath the boughs of a tree, the rustling of leaves and the rushing of water loud in his ears.

 _L’Mantree_ , says a sign nailed to the bark of the oak tree.

 _Wilbur Soot - 1288-1312,_ says another one just underneath that.

Wilbur blinks. He remembers both of these things, the naming of the tree and the pain of the sword. He’s not sure if he likes that.

For a long time, he stands there silently. It’s just him, and the wind, and the rushing river. 

And then he’s not alone, and there are quiet footsteps padding up behind him.

“Heya, mate,” Phil says. “Saw you standing down here. You okay?”

“Is this my grave?” Wilbur asks, looking down at his father. This time, their eye contact doesn’t throw Wilbur into a flashback; it just makes Phil avert his gaze to the ground.

“Yeah, I - I buried you here,” Phil says, voice faint. “It was just a private thing, really, but. I thought you deserved something.”

Wilbur’s eyes flick from Phil back to the sign on the tree’s trunk. The knowledge that he’s standing six feet above his own corpse doesn’t hurt quite as much as the realization that he hadn’t had a funeral. The-him-that-was-alive was apparently awful enough that nobody showed up for his burial except the man who killed him.

Suddenly, the name on the sign feels alien.

He doesn’t remember the things alive-Wilbur did. Things are pretty solid up until the day he’d approached Tommy (his brother, but not Phil’s son) and asked him if he wanted to run for president; after that, it’s mostly static. (Except for his death, of course.)

How many planks of his deck have been replaced? Does it matter if his cannons are still original if his sails and mast are not?

“Wilbur?” Phil asks. Dead-Wilbur turns to look at him - his hand’s raised like he wants to put it on dead-Wilbur’s shoulder but can’t quite work up the courage to.

“Ghostbur,” he corrects. It feels better as soon as he says it. “I’m not Wilbur.”

Phil tries his best not to flinch. Ghostbur offers him a smile anyway.

It’s Phil who leaves first, this time, saying he’s tired and needs sleep. Alivebur (that’s so much more concise that alive-Wilbur) might have made a jab at his age. Ghostbur only smiles and wishes him a good night.

* * *

Ghostbur’s scouting out the crater when he finds it, laying in the spot where he thinks the stage used to be. He lifts it off the ground, and he sees the hole torn through the back, and he feels the stiffness of the fabric where the dried blood isn’t visible against the black dye. 

It only takes that much for him to know he can’t keep it. Even just looking at it makes him dizzy, makes him think about a ravine that never really felt like home.

A short walk later, he finds himself presenting it to Niki.

She technically hasn’t met him before, not as he is now, but the word of his existence has been spread around the entire server by this point. Besides, even if _he_ hasn’t met _her_ either, he still thinks he knows her; she’s present in most of his memories.

So, when he walks into her bakery and thrusts Alivebur’s coat at her and says, “I want you to have this,” it’s almost too easy to predict the way her eyes well up with tears.

“Sorry,” she sniffles, rubbing at her face. “It’s just - are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he says, and then again, with more conviction. “Yeah, definitely. You - you knew him better than anyone. You know _me_ better than anyone.”

A thousand looks cross Niki’s face then, each and every one laced with grief. Ghostbur doesn’t have time to decipher all of them before she’s hesitantly reaching out and taking the coat from his outstretched hands.

“Thank you.” Niki holds it like she’s not sure what to do with it, her wet eyes tracking over the fabric.

Ghostbur nods. “Of course.”

They’re quiet for a moment, and then Niki speaks.

“I have a question, if you’re okay with answering it.” She waits for him to nod, and then she asks, “What do you remember?”

It takes him a long moment to think. There isn’t any sort of coherent timeline in his head; all that his memory is are flashes of Niki-L’Manburg-cheering-wine-Fundy, little pieces of happy memories nestled between days or weeks of _nothing_.

“I don’t know,” he says, honestly. “It’s a lot of little things, mostly. The important bits.”

Niki gives him a smile, and though her face is tired and drawn, she’s still trying to come off as comforting. “Why don’t you write it down?” she asks. “I can get you a book, if you want.”

Even in life, Wilbur was always more of a writer than anything. Ghostbur still has some bits of music in his head, the happier pieces that he wrote with his friends around him and softness in his heart. If he really thinks, he might be able to dredge up a line or two of poetry.

(Near the end, it was speeches and whispers and lies that motivated-manipulated-coerced his soldiers-friends-brother. Even in Wilbur’s last moments, he died with signs on the walls spelling out his greatest symphony, forever unfinished.)

Ghostbur smiles back. “That’d be nice.”

* * *

It takes a few days for Niki to get him the book, and a few more for Ghostbur to actually sit down and start writing. There’s no particular reason for it; he just keeps getting distracted by other things, like Tommy and the plans he has for redecorating the crater. Eventually, though, he lets himself flop down in the only chair in his house in the sewer under the newly-constructed windmill with a pen and his book in his hands. 

He flips the book open to the first pale, empty page, and almost immediately he starts scribbling in long, flowing cursive.

There’s a thousand beautiful things in his head - the smell of bread and the sun setting over blackstone walls and the warmth of the Camarvan. Those are the first to go on the page, reminders of better days.

What else is there? He hums, shifting in his seat, nibbling on the end of his pen. There’s the people he’s known, Niki, and Tommy, and Techno.

On that last one, his thoughts get caught in a snag. Technoblade, Technoblade. Ghostbur hasn’t met him quite yet, even if Alivebur knew him better than anyone else on this server, at least until Phil joined.

What does he remember about Technoblade?

(Techno looks up at him, and even from a distance, Wilbur can hear the shaky anxiety in his voice as he stutters out, “like for lunch?”

Tommy grabs Wilbur’s arm, shaking him, begging for him to do something.

Wilbur smiles. Wilbur says nothing. Wilbur watches as Techno’s body language shifts, as he raises his crossbow, as beautiful red-white-and-blue lights dance across the festival grounds.

Tubbo dies at Wilbur’s hands. Techno is just the weapon he uses to do it.)

Ghostbur blinks it away. The smell of gunpowder lingers in his nostrils. His ears pop from the imaginary noise.

 _Sparring with Techno as a kid,_ is what he ends up writing instead. It’s not a lie; he does remember it, the days where Wilbur would beg and beg and beg until Techno gave in, tossing him a mock wooden sword. Techno was always kind of like a cool older brother, and even if Wilbur always left their sparring matches with bruises on his arms and chest, he never stopped trying to hang out with his dad’s friend.

It’s just that one day Alivebur got tired of losing.

* * *

The memory book ends up being the first in a collection. The day after Ghostbur starts writing in it, he finds a book titled _Independance_ inside a tipped over chest in the half-restored Camarvan. The misspelled title makes him laugh, and the contents fill his gut with a warm, soft buzzing. 

_“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Victory.”_

Those final words stare up at him from the last page, and all Ghostbur can remember is the warm sun beating down on his head as he wrote, his closest friends by his side. He wants to bottle that feeling forever.

So, instead of replacing the declaration in the chest he got it from, he pockets it. It finds its new home on the bookshelf next to the chair in his house.

Things only snowball from there. Ghostbur finds _Independance_ , and then a week later he finds another book titled _POG Policies_ , and soon after that _War_. Before he knows it, he’s got a full bookshelf and he’s forced to make a second one. That, too, is soon stacked tall with beaten, aged books and messy piles of letters.

If asked, Ghostbur probably wouldn’t be able to explain _why_ he’s slowly stashed enough books away to make a small library. Preserving history, maybe - although that’s only half-true.

When he reads the books he’s collected, and he does so often, he almost feels alive again. He almost feels like he could be the Wilbur whose hands were stained black with ink and nothing else. It’s not just about the history, it’s about what he _feels_ when he remembers the few things he has left in his skull.

Of course, life is infinitely more complicated than the looping handwriting in _Independance_ and _Decree_ make it out to be. But nobody in Pogtopia’s ranks wrote books, and so Ghostbur is content to read the old documents left over from L’Manburg’s golden days.

* * *

The sun sets slowly over the L’Manburg of Ghostbur’s creation.

It’s taken him weeks to construct the wooden bridges that gap the crater-chasm, to build the tiny rustic houses that squat against the cliffside. Now, though, standing next to the windmill he lives underneath, Ghostbur can look over the new L’Manburg and say that it was all worth it.

It’s different than the old L’Manburg. Of course it is; nothing could ever quite live up to the blackstone walls, the redwood trees, the shallow lake. Ghostbur considers the podium, though, and the rainwater starting to collect in the bottom of the crater, and he thinks it’s close enough. All that’s missing, at this point, is the bustle of life. Everything is still except for the windmill silently turning in the breeze and the twin silhouettes walking towards the docks.

Curious, like a child who asks too many questions, he follows.

It turns out to be Fundy and Phil. Ghostbur smiles - two of his favorite people in one spot.

They’re fishing at the end of the pier, their backs lit by the golden-hour glow coming from the sun behind them. Ghostbur’s feet are silent against the wooden pier; his footsteps always are, now. 

Despite that, Fundy turns around, probably to check on the chest just behind him. There’s a moment where Ghostbur can see his face, can see him squinting against the sun, and then his eyes widen as he realizes who’s standing there.

Ghostbur waves.

Tentatively, Fundy waves back. “Hello, Dad,” he says, and Ghostbur beams, half-walking half-floating closer to the end of the pier. Phil smiles at him as he settles down onto the spruce post extending into the water below.

“What’cha doing out here?” Ghostbur asks, and immediately, he can feel the tone shift. There’s a pause in which Fundy and Phil look at each other before either of them break the silence.

“Eret was gonna adopt me.” Fundy’s voice is half-careful, half-reckless, and wholly contradictory. “But it kinda fell through, so… here we are.”

Phil hums in agreement. Ghostbur barely hears it, though; his mind is far away.

( _No relation_ , the Fundy of a few months ago says. _I was just raised in L’Manburg, and he was the president at the time, and that’s it._ )

Fundy’s voice shakes him out of his thoughts. “We’re cleaning the trash out of the ocean.”

Ghostbur latches onto that like it’s a lifeline.

“Your mother would be proud of you, kiddo,” he smiles. Fundy doesn’t look impressed by his answer. He looks to Phil, who nods. Ghostbur shifts uncomfortably on the post he’s sitting on.

“Dad, I think we need to have a talk.”

Ghostbur laughs. “What about?”

“Everything,” Fundy scoffs. “What isn’t there to talk about? I tried to get adopted by Eret and you’re calling me _kiddo_.”

Ghostbur laughs again, more frantically this time. “I mean, you basically still are. It seems like just yesterday that you were just thirteen.” Following his words, it’s quiet, very quiet.

Fundy’s face twists. “Why do you treat me like this?” he asks, and Ghostbur is thrown from the frying pan.

What does he even say? What does he say, when all the answers he could give Fundy are painful? The last thing he wants - the last thing he’s _ever_ wanted - is for people to be sad. Digging all of that up and resurfacing it _can’t_ be the way to fix it, not when just the sight of Ghostbur’s face is all it takes to unearth those old skeletons. Isn’t it better to move on and forget?

So, he remains silent. The smile is frozen on his lips, a mimicry of the emotion he should be able to show his _son, his baby boy, his little champion._

“Why can’t you talk to me?” Fundy cries, a little champion no longer. “Just once! Just once in my life I want to have a serious conversation with you!”

Faintly, Ghostbur stares out over the sea. The only sound is the lapping of the waves. His hands shake; he does not answer.

Fundy huffs, storming away. After a moment, Phil follows him. Ghostbur pretends he can’t feel the mournful gaze lingering on his back.

* * *

“Hello, Tommy,” Ghostbur chirps, phasing into tangibility.

“Prime!” Tommy shouts, jumping a mile high and nearly hitting his head on the roof of the strip mine. His head swivels around, and his wide eyes fix on Ghostbur, and it takes him a few seconds to relax. Even then, the tension doesn’t seem to leave his shoulders fully. “Oh. Hey, Ghostbur.”

“Whatcha doing?”

Tommy turns back to mining. “Grinding for iron,” he grunts out between swings of his pickaxe - which, Ghostbur notes, is stone.

“Didn’t you just get full iron?” Ghostbur asks, head cocked to the side like a confused puppy. He quite likes the innocence that mental images procures. Being soft is _nice_ , especially after his alive counterpart spent so long trying to be anything but.

Tommy hums. “Yeah.” He sounds weary. “Dream took it away.”

For the first time in a while, Ghostbur frowns. “Why?”

There’s a beat of silence, as Tommy keeps chipping away at the stone walls of the mine.

“He’s just doing what’s best for me,” Tommy finally says, sounding like he’s trying to convince himself more so than Ghostbur. 

And, for a second, Ghostbur remembers. He remembers a ravine and potatoes for every meal and _Tubbo’s a traitor, Tommy, I’m just looking out for you. Don’t be stupid._

For a second, neon green doesn’t seem so different from ash-stained black.

“Oh.” The word’s acetic on his tongue. It’s quiet for a moment, and then Ghostbur’s lips quirk back into a smile. “Well, have fun!” He waves airily, sinking back into the wall from whence he came.

He watches Tommy for a bit longer, but he’s hidden in the wall the entire time, intangible and silent.

* * *

Ghostbur’s on his way back from a short trip out of Logsteadshire, a few berries clutched in his hands. He’d gone all the way to L’Manburg, and then a little further, to find them; he figures they’re a nice, sweet surprise for Tommy, who usually consists on a diet of whatever scrap meat he’s found from small mammals.

Before he’s all the way back, though, Dream slinks out from behind the frame of the nether portal.

“Hello, Ghostbur,” he says, voice flat. 

Ghostbur blinks, echoing a “Hello, Dream!” back. This is the first time he’s run into Dream since Tommy was exiled, and he’s not quite sure where they stand.

“You’re just the man I wanted to see.” Dream’s apparently oblivious to Ghostbur’s nervousness, either intentionally or unintentionally. “I’m sure you know how Tommy’s been planning a beach party recently.”

He does know; Tommy was so excited when he came to Ghostbur with his rough plans. He says as much. Dream chuckles. If Ghostbur’s hair could stand on end, it would.

“Yeah, well, Tommy and I are going to need you to hand out invites.” He waves a hand dismissively, and, sure enough, it’s holding a small stack of invites.

Ghostbur hums.

Leaving hasn’t crossed his mind, at least not until now. Tommy’s his brother, and practically has been since he stumbled into Alivebur’s life a couple years ago. Ghostbur wants to do the best he can for him, and his eyes, that usually means being present.

(The kid’s been through a lot. He lost his country twice, now, and his brother, and his best friend. He’s been put through war after war, both by Dream and by Ghostbur’s living counterpart.

Ghostbur wants to do the best he can, but Alivebur didn’t, and Ghostbur doesn’t know how to fix what’s left in his wake, no matter how many tents he builds. Alivebur loved Tommy in a way that hurt him and Ghostbur’s not sure he won’t do the same.)

“Gonna need a yes or no here, Wilbur. It’s a very important job,” Dream says, shocking Ghostbur out of his train of thought. He considers the stack of invites in Dream’s hand, and the cold, emotionless smiley face on his mask, and the stack of invites again.

Maybe a party will cheer Tommy up, at least. (Maybe Ghostbur won’t have to sit around and helplessly watch his brother suffer.)

He takes the papers, berries forgotten.

(When Tommy confronts him a couple weeks later about losing the invites, Ghostbur doesn’t know what to say. Ostensibly, it’s Dream’s fault. That doesn’t mean Ghostbur’s cowardice hadn’t played a part.)

* * *

Ghostbur wakes up, and his face burns against the rain crashing down from overhead. The sky is grey; it’s like the gods themselves are crying.

There is a crater.

He flinches, eyes wide. No, this was - no. This wasn’t supposed to happen again. Ghostbur stumbles backwards, gaze fixed on the bare, exposed stone, and he nearly trips over a hole in the remnants of the wooden floor below his feet.

 _There were fish living in the old crater,_ he thinks, a tad hysterically. He liked those fish. He threw them bits of food when he could.

His hand meets the slick-wet top of a half destroyed furnace. It burns his palm.

The pain shocks him out of it, just for a moment. He needs to get out of the rain, before he melts. He needs to… He needs… 

(Where would he go? It’s not like there’s anywhere to take shelter anymore.)

Ghostbur pushes himself upright, and on shaky, transparent legs, he stumbles out of what’s left of Phil’s house. He barely manages to get out and onto semi-solid ground before there’s a horrific crashing noise behind him, and what’s left of the country he built and rebuilt is gone, collapsing into the bottomless pit below. Ghostbur watches it go with wide eyes.

Outside is _bad_. The smell of the rain mixes with the smell of gunpowder and smoke, and all of it stings at the inside of Ghostbur’s nostrils. Desperately, he looks around for anyone who can help him - Tommy, or Techno, or Phil, or…

 _Friend_.

Friend was tied to a fencepost in the house that Ghostbur’s just watched fall into the void. How could he have forgot him?

The muddy ground is slippery under Ghostbur’s half-opaque feet. He stumbles a few times as he sprints around the edge of the crater. He’s not quite sure where he’s going, but he knows he needs to find someone.

It’s in that half-blind haze, the rain pelting against his face, that he nearly bowls over Tubbo.

“Hey, Ghostbur.” Tubbo sounds tired.

“Tubbo,” Ghostbur gasps, out of breath despite the fact that he does not need to breathe. “Tubbo, what happened?”

The kid blinks at him. “Uh, Dream blew everything up,” he says, in a tone that sounds like he could not care less. Ghostbur can hear the tension underlying his words anyway, and he knows it’s purposeful. (It takes a faker to know a faker.) “And Techno. And Phil.”

Ghostbur can practically feel himself pale. “Phil?” he asks. “Are you - are you sure?”

Tubbo shrugs. “Pretty sure, Wilbur.”

“I gotta talk to him,” Ghostbur mumbles. He doesn’t even bother to correct Tubbo as he leaves.

It’s not hard to find Phil, even through the rain and smoke clouding the sky. There’s a flash of lightning, and suddenly, a winged silhouette is visible in the sky. Ghostbur wastes no time running towards it.

Sure enough, standing on a ledge over the precipice is Phil, his trident in hand, his raw, burnt wings flared out behind him. Ghostbur looks up at his father, Alivebur’s father, and he almost chokes on the lump in his throat. _Like son like father_ , he supposes. _Like son like father._

“Phil?” is all he manages to say. It’s quiet and barely audible over the rain.

At the sound of his voice, Phil turns, and Ghostbur can see the wide-eyed grin on his face. L’Manburg is _gone again_ and the man who’s done it is smiling, and it is a Prime-given miracle that they are not in an underground room filled with signs and buttons, because Ghostbur does not think he could hold a sword right now.

“Phil, why did you blow up L’Manburg?”

His dad’s smile falters, at that. “I had to.”

“You knew Friend was in there,” Ghostbur says, and he knows he sounds like a petulant child but he cannot bring himself to care.

“Aw, mate, it’s okay-” Phil starts, but Ghostbur cuts him off with a yell.

“You knew Friend was in there!” he repeats, and once more when Phil tries to speak again. “Stop! Stop! You knew he was in your house.” 

His hands curl into fists at his sides, and it is a good thing he can’t cry, because the rain has already burnt his cheeks.

“You knew,” and here his voice cracks, “You knew that everything everyone loved was in this town.”

And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it. Phil knew what he was doing when he decided to work with Dream. Alivebur knew what he was doing when he pressed the button.

Phil opens his mouth. Ghostbur doesn’t give him an inch to defend himself.

“You were the _hero_ , Phil. You came to town and you slayed the dragon. But how can you look at this,” he gestures over the crater that was twice L’Manburg, “how can you look at this and call yourself the hero anymore?”

He’s not arguing with Phil, not anymore. No, instead he is arguing with a black beanie and ash-stained fingers, with signs on walls and TNT buried deep underground.

Phil has never once called himself the hero. Ghostbur remembers his own death anyway.

“I’m sorry,” Phil says, and the manic grin that was once on his face is now entirely gone. His voice is sober; his eyes meet Ghostbur’s. For a second, for just a _second_ , Ghostbur thinks he might really mean it. 

And then, Phil says, “maybe one day you’ll understand.”

Ghostbur - he who understands better than anyone else, who knows the pain he caused in life - Ghostbur leaves. Phil’s silent as he stumbles away; Ghostbur doesn’t know if that’s better or worse than if he tried to keep talking.

His entire existence has been spent trying to keep this exact scenario from happening again. That’s the only thought that runs through his head as he aimlessly wanders through the destroyed remnants of L’Manburg. From the moment he awoke, all he has wanted is for L’Manburg to be happy. Objectively speaking, Ghostbur is a failure.

His feet have carried him to the top of the staircase over the river. It gives him the perfect vantage point of his nation, its torn stone and its obsidian grid. The rain still sizzles against his skin; it shows no sign of letting up.

It seems Wilbur is only capable of destruction.

He shakes, and he wishes he were anyone but himself.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!!! this fic took me a While to write, and i'm really really proud of it, so i hope you guys like it too.
> 
> if you like my writing or care about my opinions or just want to watch a 20 minute video as background noise, i wrote and uploaded a video essay about a week ago!!! it's a look into the dream smp as a work of fiction, and an analysis of what i think is good and what i think is bad. here's the link: [video essay](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nKFy1LKcoE)
> 
> if you enjoyed this, pls consider kudosing or commenting. it's not necessary but feedback helps me know what i'm doing well :))


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